26 Feb 2014

After successfully launching Self Declaration Scheme for manufactures of electronics and IT products recently, BIS has decided to expand its Product Conformity Assessment Scheme by launching Self-Declaration of Conformity to Indian Standards and Self-Declaration of Conformity to Safety Standards. These new schemes shall not require any visit to the factory by BIS scientists and the manufacturers shall be registered on the basis of testing of the product against Indian Standards in a BIS recognised laboratory. The new schemes shall initially be available for low risk products only. This was announced by Prof. K.V. Thomas, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution while addressing a press conference here today.A national design competition is planned for selecting the standard marks for the new Schemes launched by BIS. He added that it has been done to provide efficient BIS Certification services to Industries in India and abroad

Highlighting therecent initiatives taken by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the national standards body vested with the task of Standardization, Certification and Quality Assurance, Prof Thomas said besides streamlining the existing conformity assessment schemes, Tatkal Scheme has been launched for fast and easy grant of licence, within 30 days, under mandatory certification.

Categorization of licences into 3 categories namely Star Licence, Normal Licence and Marginal Licence has been introduced whereby licenses are rated on the basis of their performance. The Marking provisions for other than quality parameters have been simplified.

Prof Thomas said that to further strengthen interests of consumers, BIS has decided to allow public to offer samples for testing wherever they have a doubt about the quality of the ISI /Hallmarked jewellery and reward suitably for the information of misuse of ISI mark/hallmark.

Brand wise grant of licence is also proposed to be introduced, for protection of consumers and to help in controlling spurious/fictitious brands sold as quality products in the market. Market surveillance with well defined mechanism is proposed to strengthen the Conformity Assessment Schemes and to empower consumers with the knowledge of the manufacturers whose products they should buy/not buy.

The Minister said that to protect the consumers from being cheated while purchasing ISI mark product and hallmarked jewellery and for taking action against the unscrupulous manufacturers misusing ISI mark/hallmark, a unique identification number for each hallmarked jewellery article is being introduced as a component of the hallmark to ensure the traceability of hallmarked articles.

Scheme for Testing of Public Samples has been launched to get the ISI marked product tested from BIS recognized labs and hallmarked jewellery tested from BIS referral lab. A provision has been made to refund the cost of product plus testing charges, in case the quality of ISI marked product/purity of hallmarked jewellery found to be lower than that declared/marked on the product/jewellery.

Prof Thomas said that the license fee for small jewellers has been rationalized based on the location of jeweller. For example, the jeweller located in town having 3 to 10 lakhs population will be required to pay Rs.5000/- for a period of three years, whereas a jeweller located in a smaller town with population less than 3 lakhs will pay Rs.2500/- for the same period. Further, the procedure for grant of licence has been simplified, to encourage more such jewellers to take license from BIS.

A Trade Facilitation Cell is proposed to be created in BIS, keeping in view the growing importance of standards and conformity assessment procedure in global trade.

BIS operates Certification Schemes that assure quality, reliability and safety to the users. It presently has over 40,000 licenses, including Product Licenses, Jewellery and Management Systems licenses.